Mysuru: It appears as though the saga of dysfunctional, and very few streetlights, in the ‘Heritage City’ will only continue. While many arterial roads in the city have no
streetlights whatsoever, there are others which have too few – the
Nelson Mandela Road, a nearly 1km stretch between Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Circle and Millennium Circle , has a mere six streetlights, plunging vast stretches of the thoroughfare in darkness after dusk.
While two of the half-a-dozen streetlights are close to the KSRTC building, the remaining ones have been placed near commercial shops. One of them is, in fact, tilted towards a bakery, probably to increase its visibility to the public.
Although a high-mast lighting pole is seen standing erect and tall at the Millennium Circle, the lights do not work. It is hard not to overstate the importance of this junction given that buses, and other vehicles bound for Mandya and Bengaluru from Mysuru pass by it. Named after the leader who fought for the abolition of apartheid in South Africa, Nelson Mandelathe road is tread on by the elephants during the Dasara procession. While the road was upgraded to a concrete one two years ago, it appears as though
Mysuru City Corporation (MCC) officials did not pay heed to clearing the darkness that engulfed many parts of the street.
A police officer claimed they had appealed to the MCC to install streetlights on Mirza Road. “But there was no response from the MCC. It is not just Nelson Mandela Road, even Mirza Road where the Police commissioner’s office located suffers from the same problem. We are tired of repeatedly knocking on the doors of civic agencies, and not getting solutions,” he added.
That the MCC appears not too concerned about fixing this problem despite Dasara not too far on the horizon has alarmed the citizens.
Frustrated but not helpless, citizens have decided to take to the net to express their displeasure. The Twitter handle @MysuruInfrastructure asks MCC whether it had time to look into the issue, while another user of the microblogging site, @MysuruCivicIssues pointed out streetlights on the road was a longstanding request from citizens. These users have tagged elected representatives, besides the commissioners of police and MCC in their tweets.
